Myths of The Regenerative Era: Part I — The Eagle & The Condor
Myths of The Regenerative Era: Part I — The Eagle & The Condor
What an ancient prophecy from The Americas teaches us about the regenerative age
We stand here today at the precipice of a new era.
With over 8 billion humans on the Earth, we have completed our conquest of nature.
We have designed a global economic system predicated on infinite growth, fueled by the extraction of nature and slavery of people.
Along the way we killed God, religion and truth. In the end we enthroned the most successful empire of all time: Money.
A vast majority of life on earth has become enslaved to this hidden master with an endless appetite for consumption.
In order to survive the polycrisis we need a new story of what it means to be human in the planetary age of pandemics, climate change, AI alignment, and biodiversity collapse.
This story needs to coordinate the collective human attention towards regenerative behaviors that replenish and restore Earth’s living systems for generations to come.
Introduction
With the evolution of AI, our society is accelerating towards the inevitable conclusion of the capitalist experiment, with 50% of human jobs experts believe will be replaced by machines within our lifetime and a radical concentration of wealth in the hands of the 1%.
Simultaneously, we are witnessing the unraveling of Earth’s living systems at an alarming pace. Record temperatures have become the new norm, with 2023 marking one of the hottest years on record. Wildfires have scorched over 10 million hectares globally in just the past year. The Amazon rainforest is nearing a critical tipping point. Arctic ice is melting faster than ever. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing rapidly, with studies suggesting it could collapse as early as 2050. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying off, with over 50% lost since the 1950s.
While most narratives have fixated on the doom and gloom scenarios of AI misalignment and climate catastrophe, in this article, I want to explore how these planetary crises can be catalysts for a new era of planetary flourishing known as The Symbiocene—a term coined by Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht—where humanity assumes its rightful place as a custodial species and cultivates human systems in balance with nature. This era would be the culmination of the regenerative age and the pinnacle of human evolution at planetary scale.
As a thought experiment I wanted to explore how our descendants might look back on the pivotal period in Earth’s history we are facing today and ask:
What did we do to reverse the downward spiral of collapse and create an era of such profound abundance and beauty?
Overview
In this series of essays I’m going to rely on the use of myths to lay the foundation for this speculative vision of the regenerative era. A myth is a multi-layered narrative that reveals existential truth and has been a primary vehicle of meaning making throughout history.
In unpacking the core myths of our society first foremost we can uncover the acupuncture points for intervention toward a regenerative future and better understand ourselves in the big picture of history. These leverage points need to be influenced by new narratives, new rituals and new webs of relationship which we will discover through an ancient prophecy shared by a variety of indigenous communities throughout The Americas known as “The Eagle and The Condor” including the Inca and the Quechua, as well as many Amazonian tribes.
In the third and final part I’ve written a number of essays that weave together a speculative vision for the regenerative era with references to real projects today as an anchor to the transition well underway—providing actionable steps for people to get involved in the cutting-edge of the regenerative movement. My hope is to break free from the toxic feed of doom and despair and contribute to a growing movement of leaders dedicating their lives in service of a better future for generations to come.
Author’s note
I was born a white male into the suburbs of America. I currently have no direct embodied experience of the indigenous communities from which this prophecy arose, and therefore likely have many cultural biases and blindspots that miss some of the nuances of the wisdom expressed in this oral tradition. I openly welcome insights and criticism from the broader community to help fill in these gaps and realign nuances as I embark upon this journey to uncover indigenous wisdom and it’s role in the regenerative age. If there are any indigenous writers who would like to collaborate on further pieces, please get in touch!
Preface: The Prophecy of The Eagle & The Condor
The ancient prophecy of The Eagle and The Condor originates from a variety of indigenous cultures in the Americas including the Inca and the Quechua of the Andes, as well as Achuar, Shuar, and Kichwa peoples across the Amazon rainforest. Passed down by oral tradition for centuries, the prophecy foretells a time when humanity would split into two paths: the path of the Eagle and the path of the Condor.
The Eagle represents the Western rational, scientific, and industrial mind—marked by reason, technology, and conquest. The Condor symbolizes the Indigenous, intuitive, spiritual, and heart-centered ways of being—embodying wisdom, nature, and interconnectedness.
According to the prophecy, for many centuries, the Eagle's path would dominate, leading to significant advancements but also to exploitation, environmental degradation, and societal imbalance—beckoning the wisdom of The Condor to provide balance amidst significant turmoil.
The prophecy foretells a critical juncture—a time of crisis and opportunity—when the Eagle and the Condor would fly together in the same skies. This union signifies a coming together of mind and heart, technology and nature, reason and intuition, matter and spirit.
Many indigenous leaders are claiming that this time is now…
Regeneration and reconciliation
For children of The Eagle it is imperative not only to celebrate The Condor’s rise to the planetary stage but also The Eagle must recognize that its entire society has been built upon the flesh and blood of The Condor. In processing the pain inflicted by its ancestors, The Eagle will rediscover its innate drive to cultivate balance and calibrate its actions with the wisdom so boldly embodied by The Condor.
A Bird’s Eye View: The Eagle & The Condor
Below is a brief overview of The Eagle and The Condor, their creation myths and various aspects of the cultures that have emerged under this archetype. The regenerative era will be defined by humanity’s ability to bridge the gap between these two human ways of being for the purpose of cultivating symbiotic human cultures in harmony with nature at a planetary scale.
Myths of The Eagle
While most Westerners don’t believe in a literal interpretation of the creation story as written in the book of Genesis, they also don’t understand how deeply entrenched these ideas are in our psyche and in our society as a whole. As a result, The Eagle unconsciously enacts a range of behaviors as a reflection of the underlying myth of its society.
By recounting the story of The Garden of Eden, we can highlight a handful of key themes that will help us understand the ‘mythical constructs’ of The Eagle’s colonial society that has emerged through the Enlightenment, Industrial and Digital Age, resulting in widespread ecosystem collapse, climate change and societal injustice.
Creation Myth: The Garden of Eden
In the creation story found in Genesis, God creates the world in six days and rests on the seventh. Initially, God creates the heavens and the earth, bringing order to chaos. He then creates light, separates it from darkness, and establishes day and night. He creates the animals of the ground, the creatures of the sea and the birds of the sky.
Then on the sixth day, God creates humans, namely Adam and Eve, in His own image. This act sets humans apart from the rest of creation, imbuing them with a unique likeness to God. God blesses Adam and Eve and commands them to "be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:28). This directive explicitly places humans in a position of authority over nature, implying that their role is to govern and manage all other life forms.
Throughout the creation narrative, humans are depicted as distinct and separate from the natural world. They are the only beings created in God's image, and they are given the responsibility to rule over and cultivate the earth for their unique benefit.
Impact of the fall: separation & competition
This idea that humans are somehow separate and superior to all of nature is the foundation of The Eagle’s society. Its impact on Earth’s living systems is devastating and widespread. Many have extended this separation and superiority to other groups of humans, justifying genocide and systemic injustice throughout history.
The core belief is “I am greater than you are; you are lesser than me” and is the predominant attribute of the most leaders on the world stage. This belief weaves itself into the fabric of identity that is embedded in every aspect of Western society and propagates the competition-driven consumer economy that dominates global civilization. In contrast, Indigenous communities viewed this belief and resulting behavior pattern as a virus of the mind known as “Wetiko,” an illuminating insight we’ll later explore in the section on The Condor.
Origin, identity and power
By laying the foundation of The Eagle with it’s creation story and the core belief of what it means to be an ‘Individual’ in this society we can uncover the other core myths to understand the civilization we have built and its impact on the stability of Earth’s living systems. The ideas below might not sound like mythical constructs from the outset but through contemplation we can see these parts of our society as fictional narratives that are malleable, adaptable and continuously evolving.
These myths are representations of The Eagle’s presiding level of consciousness. As with any object of consciousness, by bringing these narratives into awareness we gain the leverage that comes with choice. This distance gifts us the ability to respond with compassion for ourselves and for others—to act out of love and not out of fear—therefore dispelling the power of Wetiko and the imbalance it creates.
This is where our greatest power lies, and it is the core calling of the regenerative transition. We need the ability to tell a story that is more compelling, more convincing and more lifegiving for the human race.
The Seven Myths of The Eagle
The modern western society of The Eagle is built upon seven core myths:
Individual
Death
Money
Property
Company
Nation state
GDP (”Gross Domestic Product”)
In the section below, we’ll briefly define the myth and outline it’s implications.
The myth of the Individual
This central atomic belief can described as ‘I am an individual motivated by rational self-interest; I am separate from others; I am separate from nature’. Through this myth, The Eagle has constructed an elaborate global society that extracts human and natural resources in an increasingly efficient manner. This “growth at all costs” paradigm is a direct reflection of this core concept of identity.
We are now witnessing the impact of the Eagle’s myth of what it means to be human. The planetary crises we face (pandemics, climate change, biodiversity collapse, AI alignment) are direct repercussions of this identity story. These crises are a blessing in that they force us to re-examine this myth as we increasingly recognize our interconnectedness and the sacredness of all of life.
The myth of death
Throughout human history societies have explored varying belief systems around death ranging from cycles of reincarnation to a ‘heaven or hell’ afterlife determined by a divine judge under the umbrella of an impossible law. In the wake of The Enlightenment, The Eagle’s separate individual relies upon the notion of a finite lifespan. It’s mythology of death can be described as “I am a material being. This life is all there is. In the end I die and the matter from which I am made will return to dust.”
This theory of death allows The Eagle not only to emphasize the importance of matter and material possessions but also to minimize the consequence of inflicting death upon other living beings. It also provides a powerful point of control that The Eagle’s institutions use to manipulate human behavior and install belief systems that perpetuate the rivalrous “us versus them” mentality and drive its consumerist economy toward growth.
The myth of money
Money is the primary indicator of success in an individualistic society founded on a story of material progress. The Eagle believes that “I am my net worth” and equate its individual significance by the number of digits on its balance sheet, the amount of income that it earns and its position of wealth relative to its peers.
The importance of this value driver cannot be understated. This expression of identity results in the abstract exchange of value in the form of currency that has no awareness of the real world or its impact.
As a result, The Eagle’s energy is anchored to activities that produce value in the form of money—neglecting the other forms of wealth: relational, spiritual, ecological, etc. The Eagle’s resulting motivations extend this “us versus them” into every dimension of life, measuring success through money, protecting what it owns, and extending this rivalrous mentality onto the very surface of the earth.
The key flaw in The Eagle’s monetary system is that it is *backed by debt—*a promise of future return. This predicates the entire model upon continuous growth. As we’ll later see, The Eagle is facing the inevitable limits of this mythical construct on a finite planet and is trending towards widespread fragility throughout all parts of the system.
The myth of property
The myth of property emerges when The Eagle draws a line in the sand and says “This land is mine; it is not yours. I own it and you cannot step inside these bounds without my permission.” It allows The Eagle to extract natural resources within its boundaries in exchange for money and even inflict violence in some states against those who trespass .
The idea of property is one of the central drivers of war and conflict throughout history. The Eagle’s management of land often results in habitat destruction, topsoil degradation and water pollution.
This outcome is the logical conclusion of the mythical constructs we’ve seen so far: an individual motivated by rational self-interest, making the most of a finite lifespan within the confines of a debt-backed monetary system. This confluence funnels power into the hands of a small band of individuals whose management of land is often catastrophic for earth’s broader living systems.
Our entire legal system is constructed around this myth of property and is designed to protect the landowners and governments that hold these extractive structures in place.
The myth of the company
The myth of the company allows The Eagle to draw a line in the sky, creating boundaries around images, ideas and processes in order to protect against personal liability, to accumulate wealth and coordinate large groups of people toward specific outcomes for monetary gain.
It is an evolution of the myth of property in the abstract realm of ideas, the so-called “mindsphere” emerging from The Eagle’s desire for complexity and need for control. A company provides the basis for “intellectual property” and extends the rivalrous “us verses them” belief system into the landscape of ideology.
Accompanied with a property-centric legal system, companies also protect the transference of wealth between generations, upholding the property lines and power structures that have been drawn throughout history.
The myth of the nation state
The myth of the nation state allows The Eagle’s leaders to draw a line across vast stretches of sky and land to unite people under a flag representing a common set of values and beliefs. The ultimate aim of a nation state is to provide the core infrastructure for civilization and to maintain the governance mechanisms which allow society to adapt and evolve in a productive capacity in monetary terms.
The nation state has allowed The Eagle to create divisions across the entire face of the earth, expressing its “us versus them” belief at a planetary scale. Money is the medium which allows these disparate entities to work together to attempt to collectively meet the needs of its people.
This is where The Eagle’s belief system meets an invisible glass ceiling. By creating an incentive structure tied to specific parcels of land controlled by specific groups of people with competing short-term interests it renders itself incapable of addressing planetary challenges which cross these borders and threaten the viability of living systems as a whole.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated this planetary ineptitude as a single virus easily crossed these borders and shut down a majority of The Eagle’s society. This showcased the power and motivation of the nation state to exert total control over its people through “lockdowns”. This lockdown phenomena was temporarily effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (a direct byproduct of The Eagle’s society and itself a planetary challenge), but this effect was short-lived as it began to strangle the core driver of The Eagle’s mythical machine: GDP.
The myth of GDP
The myth of GDP (”Gross Domestic Product”) is the Schelling point for all these mythical coordination vehicles. It is the key performance indicator under which the extractive ideologies of The Eagle converge:
An individual motivated by its rational self interest produces goods and services toward the acquisition of private property and accumulation of wealth through private companies for the benefit of society as protected and controlled by the nation state.
GDP is the numerical driver behind our societal slave ship cracking the whip of productivity at the helm of technological-driven innovation at the direct expense of what living systems need to survive: a stable climate with clean air and water with ample food provided by healthy soil cultivated by diverse living ecosystems.
GDP represents the largest ‘top-down’ leverage point to influence The Eagle’s society and yet it is the most fiercely protected by the presence of existing institutions and their intrenched interests. While these mythical structures may seem like immovable forces, as we explore the Myths of The Condor in the following section we can see how different societal narratives contribute to a very different set of human values resulting in a more sustainable organization of human effort and attention.
Reflection
The extractive society produced by The Eagle is a direct result of the subterranean landscape of hidden belief systems which manifest in the form of human identity, the presiding story of death and the coordination vehicles of money, property, company and nation state. While much of The Eagle’s society is fixated on the cultivation of ‘hard technologies’, leaders of the regenerative age must begin to work with the ‘soft technologies’ of belief, storytelling, myth making and community building.
We need to actively seek models and methods of transformation that produce symbiotic identity, behavior and culture. We need to radically re-imagine the institutions of our society founded on a new understanding of what it means to be human and to create new coordination vehicles in the planetary age in which we now live.
Pandemics, climate change, biodiversity collapse and AI alignment are only a handful of the challenges we face that cross the borders we have drawn and threaten the viability of the civilization we have built. Rather than viewing these as crises and mobilizing ourselves in the short-term fight or flight response we need to cultivate states of deep connection in nature and listen to the wisdom of our bodies, our ancestors and the land from which we came.
Stay tuned for part two
In the second part in this series, “Myths of The Condor” we will discover an entirely new story of what it means to be human and begin to uncover a worldview that has produced symbiotic cultures for thousands of years and is currently responsible for stewarding over 85% of the remaining biodiversity on the planet, yet constitutes only 2% of global population. It is in this niche distribution and disproportionate responsibility that we find the wisdom we need to cross the bridge through the Polycrisis into the Symbiocene.
Building this bridge is the task of the regenerative age.
Without this wisdom, every technology we build will merely add more fuel to the flame of our extractive society. Without this wisdom every contribution we make will continue to exacerbate the challenges we face.
Subscribe to join me next week for Part II: Myths of The Condor. 👇
